I snapped this photo of homegirl planting tomatoes the other day. Some of you asked how I made the photo look all etherealy-ish, and I’m getting ready to show you in painful detail the steps I took to get from the SOOC (straight-out-of-camera) image to the final, etherealy-ish image. Now, my goal is not for you to memorize each step and repeat the exact chronology of the edits on your photo. What I really want is just to show you how I roll and hope that one or more of the steps I use is ultimately helpful to you. I know I learn much better just watching someone do something; it registers more than if I were reading the steps in a manual. Can I get an “Amen?”

Amen.

Here’s the very average and highly boring straight-out-of-camera shot. It didn’t make my skirt fly up…but I knew it had potential.

So I did the only thing I know how to do in life. I opened the image in Photoshop!

The first thing I did was run the “Lovely and Ethereal” action from the Pioneer Woman Actions set. (If you don’t have the actions, don’t worry—there’s plenty in this lesson for you, too!)

Now, what I really like about these actions is, you can open up the folder and see very clearly which layers are behind the action. Then, you can adjust (or even hide) this layer or that in order to customize the action for each photo. Here, I’m going to begin by opening the Lovely and Ethereal folder and selecting the “Lighten Things” layer. See that black rectangle next to this layer? That’s a layer mask. Wherever we paint white over the black layer mask, that’s where things will lighten.

Again, I realize that makes no sense right now. But it will. I promise. One day, it will just click.

So what we need to do, with the “Lighten Things” layer selected, is select the brush tool.

Next, we need to set the foreground color to white. In other words, we’re going to be painting with white. To make the front square (foreground color) change to white, just click that little curvy arrow down yonder.

Next, with the “Lighten Things” layer selected, the brush tool selected, and the foreground color set to white, we’re going to set the brush’s opacity to around 50%. In other words, the brush won’t be painting a full-strength white. So the effect (the lightening) will be more subtle.

Now, see that circle around my punk? That’s actually the brush. I made it pretty big (by pressing the “]” [right bracket] button), because I just wanted to make a few broad strokes. Next, we’re going to just brush over my punk a few times until she (and the area around her)

Here’s where we are now. Subtle changes so far.

Now we’re going to do the same thing with the “Darken Things” layer. So select that layer (when I say “select the layer”, I mean “click on it once” to turn it blue.)

Now, as we did with the “Lighten Things” layer, we’re going to select the brush tool and set the foreground color to white so we can paint over the layer mask in the areas where we want the photo to be darker.

I just wanted to darken the edges a little bit to bring out the richness of the greens.

(Notice how the layer masks appear to have been painted over.)

The next thing I’m going to do is emphasize the gauzy-hazy look of the photo. So I select the “Lovely and Ethereal” layer within that action., because I happen to know that’s the layer that includes the gauzy-hazy effect.

I click Control-J (Or Command-J on Mac) to duplicate the layer. In essence, this “doubles” the gauzy-hazy effect. Now, at full strength, this addition of the second Lovely & Ethereal layer proved to be too much.

…So I decreased the opacity of the duplicate layer until the effect became a little more subtle.

So here’s where we are now.

As you can see, it’s already quite different from the original photo:

But I still want to fiddle and frig with it a little.

Now, before we continue, we need to flatten the image. Flattening the image basically collapses all the layers and turns the image into a new original image, so make sure you’ve adjusted all the layers to your liking. Once we flatten the image, the layers will no longer exist.

The next thing I want to do is enhance the nice light hitting homegirl’s hair. Note: I have never seen this done before and have no idea if it’s a legitimate, reasonable, or even recommended trick. But I’ve done it a few times and I like it. Is that so wrong?

First go to Filter>Render>Lighting Effects.

This is the window that pops up. And there where you see “Light Type,” set it to “Omni.” (The default is “Directional”.)

Now, see that circle with the dot in the middle? That’s the circle of light, and the center is the strongest. So I’m going to drag the circle so that the center is just above homegirl’s head, i.e. “shining” on the top of her head. (And by the way, you might need to enlarge the circle just a bit at the beginning. It starts out kind of small. To enlarge, just grab those handle thingies on the outer edges and pull.)

Click “OK” and here’s what you have. Now, obviously, this is way too harsh an effect; the light is too strong and it’s focusing too much light away from the rest of the photo, causing it to appear darker. However, I do want to retain at least a little bit of the highlighted hair. So what do you think we need to do?

That’s right, my darlings! We need to reduce the opacity of the Lighting Effects layer.

But wait…we didn’t make a Lighting Effects layer! We didn’t click Control-J (or Command-J on Mac) to create a duplicate layer before running Lighting Effects. But you know what? Everything’s gonna be okay.

Because when you run a filter, Photoshop automatically creates a little invisible layer you never see. So immediately after running the filter, you can go to the Edit menu and you’ll see an option that reads “Fade (Whatever filter you’ve just used.)” So in this case, it was “Fade Lighting Effects.”

I clicked to open that dialog, and told it to fade my Lighting Effects edit by 50% or so.

And now the harsh light has been taken away, but there’s a nice little highlight above her head.

Next, I give it a little sharpen…

Then I run the “Quick Edge Burn” action on the photo just to give it that…uh…burned edge look.

I think it’s a little heavy, though.

So I reduced the opacity of the “Quick Edge Burn” layer. That made it blend a little more.

I’m stopping there! My head is spinning, my retinas are bulging out of my eyeballs, and my toenails are festering.

Again, I would encourage you just to take bits and pieces of this lesson and use them here and there, experimenting with different effects.

And as always, if you have suggestions/recommendations about the techniques I used here, please feel free to let ‘em rip!

Cheryl in Nebraska On Friday, May 16 at 6:58 am

I love what you did with the picture. I could not read the last part of the post, because for somereason it has gone really wacko on my screen. The first half was fine the second half not so good. Pictures of cows in random places, pictures of punks where comments should be. Long spaces of nothing, and everything squashed to the very bottom of the page. Other thatn that its a really good post.

Darlyne On Friday, May 16 at 8:03 am

These are the absolute best types of posts ~ thank you so much for taking the time to show this to us. I learned so much just reading through it…can’t imagine how much I’ll learn once I find the time to sit down and actually try it.

Bridget On Friday, May 16 at 8:15 am

what’s up with this post? not the actual content, that was good, but all of the things that are supposed to be on the sides like ads are squashed at the bottom, and half of the post is under the comments, and when the comments weren’t pulled up, there was a HUGE gap in between paragraphs!

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deb. On Friday, May 16 at 8:36 am

love, love this one
tis my favorite and can’t wait to get out of work and get out the camera, get some photos and play on the laptop, making all the pretty things even more pretty with your technique!!!
thanks PW, you ROCK!

Thank you for taking us step by stop. Hard to believe with all the beauty in your life that anything needs a little touch up! http://www.lifeonanisland.com

26

Kim Rose in Wisconsin On Friday, May 16 at 8:40 am

this is SO COOL! I am so excited and ethereally thankful for your sage advice. Your visuals and fun prose are perfect. You ROCK Ree!

27

David G. On Friday, May 16 at 8:47 am

Thanks, Ree. I love your lessons!
I noticed something strange in the photo. The clump of greenery to the left front of homegirl (our right) has a shadow in a different direction than the other shadows. Weird.

I would say that I am an intermediate user of Photoshop, but I always learn new tricks from you. I tried your lighting effects–> omni trick recently and loved the result. Thanks for that! Also, I am glad you used the lovely and ethereal action in this tutorial. Very helpful.

Aren’t you just amazed sometimes by how long the “history” window becomes??

Beautiful, as always.

37

andreamatrix On Friday, May 16 at 9:17 am

Ree, I was just playing around last night and couldn’t figure out how to soften the lighting effects. How did you know!!! I can’t wait to get home from work and start playing around.

38

Jennifer Perryman On Friday, May 16 at 9:19 am

I’ve been using Photoshop for 15 years now on almost a daily basis, and I swear I’ve learned more about photo enhancement from your tutorials than $50,000 of graduate art school ever taught me. Thanks so much for the action set- it makes me look like a halfway-decent photographer too.

39

marchelle On Friday, May 16 at 9:21 am

YEEHAW! I just bought Elements 6 b/c my trial expired, so in the meantime I downloaded trial of CS3 to play with til Elements arrives! I’m going to try this and download your other actions! My poor husband and children are feeling so neglected due to the love affair with my new camera, PS and PW!

I first off wanted to say that your action ROCK. I am completely addicted. You allow me to take my so-so snapshots and turn them into works of art. I seriously am really fooling people into thinking I am a semi-professional photographer! I love it!

But I never knew that I could open the action folder and adjust it! Thanks for that little tidbit.

And thanks for the tutorial in general. I LOVE LOVE LOVE your tutorials. Keep em comin’!

41

tina On Friday, May 16 at 9:27 am

i love love that pic! such a magical shot!! ur rock ree and love love these sessions!!!!

Great description! I’ve been using your actions a lot. I used them on my very first paid photo shoot!

43

pam On Friday, May 16 at 9:40 am

Thanks. I guess you have to have agood eye for this. I thought the original was good! pam

44

anjeee On Friday, May 16 at 9:56 am

excellent tutorial, ree, thank you! you explained perfectly how to customize and make the most out of this action, as well as making photoshop, in general, more… navigatable. so, maybe that’s not a word, but you know what i mean!

I edit photos (like as a job) and even though I am not what we could say “educated” officially in the world of Photshop, I have taken a couple seminars and online tutorials. However, your online lessons are far more useful and done in a much easier, speedier manner than any class I have taken. Thanks for posting these. I look forward to trying all of these with my own pics, and the guy I work for (although it’s a bit more fun with my own.)

Stacy On Friday, May 16 at 10:55 am

I’ve had Photoshop for 4 years and I have always used it as a cropping/resizing tool and not too much more. I really appreciate your tutorials – you are unlocking a whole new world of possibilities for me! Thank you!

57

amy On Friday, May 16 at 11:03 am

Expressing my undying love to you PW!
I made a creamy complexion thanks to you! Only have elements and will add lightroom. But it’s working for me girl. You are just a real hero. Yep. A hero.

58

Kate On Friday, May 16 at 11:09 am

Maybe somebody already asked this question… How do you flatten an image? And why do you do that? Are there perks to flattening that I don’t know about? Ok there is a lot about photoshop that I don’t know about… so enlighten me, please?

that’s a lot to take in but i know i will come back to this and try it out a little at a time.
how do you know what numbers to put in on the sharpening part? i just use the numbers recommended in scott kelby’s book but i always wonder how you come up with the best fit for each photo.

You’ve got a great eye for seeing the potential in photographs. Lovely effects on this one!

70

Nana Flo On Friday, May 16 at 1:18 pm

Wow!!! Love all the step by steps… You make learning a joy…. Looking forward to more…

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Abby P On Friday, May 16 at 1:20 pm

YES, amen! Just started the “Photoshop Layers” book by one of Kelby’s cohorts – it’s starting to make sense! Love your actions, love (even MORE) learning how to use them! You rock and I love how you roll with the tutorials!

I always wondered why I couldn’t take GOOD pictures. Now I know. It’s what’s done after the pic is taken that makes the difference. Keep teaching Ree! I’m listening!

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Sandy On Friday, May 16 at 6:28 pm

Great tips! My only problem is that I want to try them all, but I can’t because I have Elements. I only recently bought the program, but your new photography section makes me wish I’d held out for the complete package. I still follow as many of your instructions as I can, and my photos are better for it. Thanks!

Carol On Friday, May 16 at 6:56 pm

I love your tutorials! You are creating a lovely set of lessons for the layman where everything is explained and illustrated and where you aren’t assuming knowledge on the part of you readers [except literacy].

83

Chris On Friday, May 16 at 7:00 pm

Thanks Ree. I love to see what can be done to a photo. My problem is trying to find the time to photo shop any thing… how do you do it? Seriously give us a mock schedule of a day in the life of Ree.

Oh, thank you Ree for answering the question. I have learned so much from you and this post was great. I’ll have to try it now. I’ve used the omni light before and love the effect.

You are such a good teacher!

85

Jen On Friday, May 16 at 8:54 pm

Ree, that was awesome!! Thanks so much for explaining it. The photo is beautiful and I can’t wait to duplicate some of the techniques. I’ve played with omni light before but was never sure when I’d have the chance to really use it. Thanks again!

Another fun tutorial! I am really excited to be going to one of the Photoshop Seminar Tour dates next week (Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Tour). I’ll be the homeschooling mother in a room full of professionals, but that’s okay. I wrote tomorrow’s Better Blogging post on the Homeschool Blog Awards site about educator discount software. Homeschoolers can get huge discounts on Photoshop, Lightroom, etc.

Dangit, I really need Photoshop! Maybe if I make my husband MM’s favorite sandwich he’ll buy it for me…
And I agree with Chris (# 83) — I’d love to see a schedule of your average day. I can’t figure out how you find time to work cattle, homeschool, cook, fix photos, and still keep all of us entertained! I suppose it has something to do with getting up at 4:45…

Bobbi On Monday, May 19 at 7:22 am

I get *such* a kick out of your photoshop stuff, teaches me a whole bunch of stuff – and inspires me to try more things with different types of photographs. Its really taken my photography to new dimensions! Thanks!

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kelli On Monday, May 19 at 10:53 am

Can someone please email me and tell me if there is a way to burn the edges of photographs in Elements?

99

Beverly On Tuesday, May 20 at 1:28 pm

Hi Ree! I am a beginner at all this photo stuff, but I REALLY want to learn! Pick Me, Please!

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Karen Calo On Tuesday, May 20 at 1:46 pm

I am beginner but love the fun stuff you can do with digital photography once I get more time. Speaking of, how do you pack all the things into your day. Sometime, give us an example of your day broken down by events. I know it starts way too early.